diff --git a/src/app/tokenized-buffer.coffee b/src/app/tokenized-buffer.coffee
index 44668cffd..876e65a51 100644
--- a/src/app/tokenized-buffer.coffee
+++ b/src/app/tokenized-buffer.coffee
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ class TokenizedBuffer
   invalidRows: null
   visible: false
 
-  constructor: (@buffer, { @tabLength }) ->
+  constructor: (@buffer, { @tabLength } = {}) ->
     @tabLength ?= 2
     @id = @constructor.idCounter++